On The Beach Blog

One might say that it's purely in the interests of parity in this year's Southampton Town Supervisor's race, as this time…

Jim Henry makes YouTube

I still haven't froggiest clue as to about who is res­ponsible for this effort… it's not as unerringly focused as 4integrity's initial effort, but the accompanying music track is better, and just who the clip's producer is supporting is coming into much clearer focus… by a simple process of elimination it's gotta be someone from the Linda Kabot camp or Alex Gregor campaign, and my money is on Gregor right now as I expect to see a clip taking the mickey out of the GOP candidate by this weekend.

I must say, though, that the use of TV's COPS "Bad Boyz" theme in last week's Heaney Hit Job, was almost prescient.

November 2nd Update: The video has since been removed.

A call this morning to Westhampton Beach "Union Free" School District Clerk Judy McCarthy... who commendably answers her own 'phone at extension 241... led to:

1. Her interesting assertion that the School District had "nothing to do with the Westhampton Free Library vote;"
2. A return call from Superintendent Lynn Schwartz who, at first blush, seems to be a reasonably forthright individual. More...

Bad Board of Ed!

Berry berry bad!

The Westhampton Beach "Union Free" School District, as just about everyone in the District should know from the mailing made this week, has a "Special Referendum" scheduled for Thursday, November 8th. More...

The "pilfered posters" caper is getting some play in Newsday today, and what has up to now been a lively and interesting campaign, is now turning dark and ugly with a week to go before the election. More...

Have been listening all day to WLNG with one ear and News12 with the other, and nothing as yet on the Southampton Town Republican Supervisor candidate Linda Kabot's announced "press conference," so it's uncertain whether it has even transpired at this posting. More...

Incumbent Southampton Town Supervisor Pat­rick "Skip" Heaney, running on the Row D Conservative line because that's all he's got left after being bounced by the rank'n'file Republicans on Primary Day (where he was also narrowly rejected by the Row C registered Independence Party members), may be run­ning away from the pesky illegal immigration issue… perhaps this should now be short-handed as "I³"… but the Conservative Party itself certainly isn't.

This television spot will be launched on the cable channels tommorrow.

Someone, it seems, has been stealing South­ampton Town Republican Supervisor Candidate Linda Kabot's signs, and it's bothersome enough that she's called a Monday morning press conference, the time dependent on when News12 can get a camera crew there. More...

...but the GOP has finally surfaced, with postals featuring Town Council Candidate Dan Russo followed by the entire Southampton Town Republican slate led by Supervisor Candidate Linda Kabot, looking as perky and photogenic as Katie Couric once did. More...

As I thought I made clear in my inaugural blog entry:

"Wanna contribute something to On The Beach Blog, fine. It can be published "anonymously" as long as I know who you are! … Just don't expect me to have the courage of your convictions if I don't know who you really are!"

This weekend there have been two eminently publishable "Comments" which will never see light of day because the contributors who took the time to write failed to provide an E-mail address.

Even the Website of once (1996-2000) and again Southampton Town Council candidate Jim Drew, who was a Conservative before there was much of a Conservative Party on this end of the Island, is curiously silent on the issue of Illegal Immigration. More...

...is the "I" word!

Or more accurately, the "I²" words: "Illegal Immigration!"

It's the one everyone in the Southampton Town Board races are avoiding like bird flu, yet it's perched in the corner of every candidates' forum cum debate like the proverbial 800 simian! More...

One Town attorney in informal colloquy said that he has to vote for incumbent Southamp­ton Town Supervisor Patrick "Skip" Heaney:

"The man has put food on my table... I've filed dozens of Small Claim Assessment Review actions thanks to his ad­min­istra­tion's reassessment program."

O, well....

It's eleven days 'til the most hotly contested Supervisor's race in recent history... which without the startling Primary results in September setting up the divisive Kabot-Heaney struggle wouldn't be saying much since the Dems haven't had a viable candidate this late in the game... will be decided. More...

Updated 11/02/2008 - 09: 12 am

...for Southampton Town!

Heaney Makes It To YouTube

While I haven't clue the first about who is responsible for this less-than-polished effort, it goes straight to the dark center of incumbent Supervisor Patrick "Skip" Heaney's greatest vulnerability, one about which his opponents have been strangely flacid.

The credit line reads only that it was produced by a "Concerned Resident of Southampton Town," and other than exhibiting a complete lack of familiarity with the possessive use of the apostrophe, it's not bad.

Res ipsa loquitur.

(November 2nd Update: The video has since been removed.)

While it'll probably be referenced, if not actually reported on, in the local newspapers this evening, the Democratic candidate for Supervisor of Southampton Town, Jim Henry, may be onto something... and, yeah!, it was worth calling a Press Conference over. More...

Updated 10/22/2007 - 05:33 pm

Stop the presses... re-plate the front page....

Even as I post this, Democratic Southampton Town Supervisor candidate Jim Henry is hold­ing a press conference:

"...revealing new information on allegations of campaign finance violations and other possible criminal misconduct involving Southampton Town and the Southampton Town Republican Committee." More...

...in the Southampton Town Supervisor's race.

Or maybe two someones. More...

...and it must really be far, far away from Westhampton Beach! Poking 'round the 'Net and came across the following at www.town-court.com:

"The village is located in the Town of South­ampton. It has 3 public beaches, but you must acquire a permit from the Village office. Just another way the Hamptons try to exclude the little folk. More...

Drat!

Too bad I didn't get a photo of it! There was a minor traffic snarl in front of The Beach Bakery so all I caught was Trustee Toni-Jo Birk in her gray "Mommy Van" pulling out of the clearly designated "No Parking/Fire Zone" spot in front of Tony's Asian Fusion on Sunset Avenue less than an hour ago.

Now we've come to expect this from SUVs visiting from Manhattan and, in front of the vacated National store, with trucks making a delivery to Waldbaum's, but from the the Village Board member who bills herself as "Police Com­missioner" on her municipal busi­ness card?!?

Shame on Mrs. Birk's not leading by example!

Eric Cohen blogs at Saghampton, which affords a clue as to where he lives. He says that he used to live in East Quogue for "a few years" in the late '70s so I might have met him some­where along the line, but as I enumerate three of those years as "blackout" ones, I have no such recollection. No matter, I like what he's doing with his blog, especially this excerpt: More...

It's not a new one, having been thrown into the copy mix with his earlier mailing pieces. But clearly it's the one which Mr. Heaney's advisers and strategists feel is the best thing they have going for them, because it's the focus of his latest mailing and his large news­paper advertisements this week... More...

...transpired at the regularly scheduled Village Board Work Session last evening, other than the concept of participatory government took another hit when Mayor Teller told Attorney Jim Hulme that he couldn't ask a question about some proposed legislation that Village Attorney Hermon Bishop had just abstracted for the first time. More...

Any who attended the August work session of the Westhampton Beach Village Board could not help but be touched by the plight of the young couple on upper Sunset Avenue. Their basement, in which much of their possessions had been cached while work was being done in the rest of their modest two-story home, had been the repository of "seven feet of water," courtesy of the previous afternoon's mercifully brief but ex­tra­ordinarily intense deluge!

"Ah Ha!" you say, "An act of God." More...

The Candidates' Night debate at the Senior Center in Hampton Bays failed to deliver the anticipated fireworks with angry home-owners climbing all over incumbent Supervisor Patrick "Skip" Heaney for the ineptly administered reassessment program which cost so many of us (yeah!, me too!) so much in property taxes this past year. More...

Another well-produced giant postcard from Democratic candidate for Southampton Town Supervisor Jim Henry arrived this weekend, but this one noticeably as short on "substance" as the first one was full! More...

When I first heard the phrase "Hubba-Hubba Factor" last month, it was uttered by a 30-something female professional who had found it amusing. I let out a spontaneous guffaw myself, and got on with my life. More...

...Supervisor Pat "Skip" Heaney's initial mailing piece?

It was sooooooooooo bad that the campaign felt it prudent to follow up with an "improved" and expanded version the very next day! More...

There was an interesting selection to launch the Westhampton Performing Arts Center's Fall film schedule, Ladrón Que Roba A Ladrón, a good way to spend a mid-October evening, especially if one is in possession of a "Film Society" card so the admission price is just $3.00... and, yeah!, I know, the Membership is $60, but it's still a pretty good deal. More...

What's with The Southampton Press Western Edition? Why aren't readers getting the full story on Village of Westhampton Beach meetings? Is the "newspaper of record" so pressed for space, that they can only devote seven brief paragraphs to the Monthly Village Board meetings?

Fortunately, as I've noted before, Channel 22 cablecasts editions of the Village Board sessions for residents and taxpayers to rely on... as long as there isn't, as discovered by Village resident Harris Palmer, a recurrence of last month's curiously truncated program. For now, I'm willing to treat that as an anomalous happenstance.

One of the leading voter-getters of those who weren't successful in the 2005 race for South­ampton Town Trustee, was bayman Bill Pell who wound up on the Independence line this time around, to challenge the GOP slate and the Democrats' sole candidate, Janet Beck.

Pell's sound-bite:

"Actually, I'm running against one Republi­can in particular, Brian Tymann. He's arro­gant, inexperienced, and I don't like the way that he and his buddy Marc Stinchi play the game. And, apparently, neither do a lot of Republicans!"

Pell has refocused his billpell.com Website and vows to mount an aggressive campaign during the last four weeks of the election.

Incumbent Supervisor Patrick ("Skip, don't call me 'Junior!'") Heaney is not only prepared to make a serious fight for his endangered polit­ical career, but the large number of attendees at his $75-a-plate fundraiser last Saturday evening at the Southampton Elks Club, assured that he'll have as much money in his campaign war-chest as he'll need to make a real battle out of it... and possibly throw the election to Democratic challenger Jim Henry. More...

Received one of the best Town political mailing pieces within recollection this past weekend.

It originated from the Democratic Supervisor candidate, Jim Henry, and displayed a male Senior with some very defensive body lan­guage and a not very happy expression. More...

At the end of a week in which Southampton Town Patrick "Don't Call Me 'Junior'" Heaney is reported to be sitting on a $231,000 campaign war chest while fighting an uphill battle to retain his incumbency for one last hurrah, Skip's holding a pricey ($75/plate) fund-raiser tonight at the Southampton Elks Club. More...

Short meeting... the Village Board is almost half the way through the calendar when The Press Western Edition's Caroline Simson and I walk in together. (We don't plan it that way; we just arrive several minutes late and chuckle all the way up the stairwell at how certain tongues would wag... starting with that of new Planning Board Chairman Ralph Neubauer, a prac­titioner of the dark arts of innuendo and duplicity.) More...

The curious matter of the Valero Port-a-Potty has been resolved and that temporary sanitary facility has joined the ranks of los desapare­cidos... after Village Code Enforcement Officer Bridget Napoli paid an official visit to the fuel station at the corner of Montauk Highway and Old Riverhead Road and informed Fratelli Chase that they needed to get off the pot and, in this instance, get the pot off the property. More...

...with the passage, 299 "Yes" to 224 "No," of the $7.8 million bond for construction of an entire new library facility... or in the language of the WFL's own announcement:

"...to authorize to undertake the financing of construction/im­prove­ment to the Library facility not to exceed $7,827,820."

Just voted on the Library Bond... number 154!

This is not much of a turnout with the polls having been open a little more than five hours.

It's becoming increasingly apparent just how much the Trustees of the Westhampton Free Library have invested in the passage of today's "Pass" or "Fail" $7.8 million Bond vote. More...

Today's the day when the future of the West­hampton Free Library, as envisioned by its Trustees, will be decided by the voters of the district. More...